


into the night with charlotte sometimes

by synecdochic



Series: gedulah [3]
Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Imported, Incompatable Sexual Orientations, Meditation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-29
Updated: 2010-05-29
Packaged: 2018-07-10 11:30:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6983101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/synecdochic/pseuds/synecdochic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>JD has just slept with Daniel for the first time -- something he's wanted for years; something he didn't think he'd ever be able to have -- and he's terrified that Daniel's going to wake up and decide it was all one giant mistake.</p>
            </blockquote>





	into the night with charlotte sometimes

**Author's Note:**

> (Originally [posted](https://synecdochic.dreamwidth.org/405277.html) 2010-05-29.)
> 
> So, all of _Gedulah_ is in Daniel's head, which is excellent for atmosphere but occasionally means one of us hits a point where we need to know more about what's going on elsewhere. We usually just talk it out until we understand the character's reactions and can go on, but I was working on one section and _desperately_ needed to know where JD's mind was, and JD is such a slippery bastard that you really have to force him to tell you what's going on. So I wrote this in order to figure it out, and then set it aside for the "lagniappe" folder, since it doesn't fit in the main story. I like it too much to let it go, though.
> 
> It's set about, oh, an hour after the first time JD and Daniel sleep together (Daniel and Cammie have been sleeping together for a while). About six months before, JD confessed to Daniel that he'd been in love with Daniel for a very long time, as Jack:
>
>> "When I conned you into moving in here, I told you that you were ours the minute we laid eyes on you. Truth. But not the whole truth. I've been in love with you since about, oh, maybe ten minutes after I first saw you. Took me a while to realize what it really was. Years, even. Couldn't say anything at the time, and if you think about it long enough, you'll figure out why. You don't need to say anything now; you don't need to do anything, now or ever. It was just well past time you knew."
> 
> JD wouldn't let Daniel (who has always thought he was straight) say or do anything at that point, but after six months or so of thinking it over, Daniel confessed to JD at _zazen_ one night that ever since that moment, he'd been starting to think of JD in a physical/sexual fashion as well. The conversation progressed from there. This is what happens after that, after Daniel falls asleep. 

_I love you. I think I have for a while now. I don't know how to show it, or what to do, or whether I could ever do what I've been thinking about, or whether I could ever be -- I don't ever want to hurt you. I don't want to lose you. Oh, God, I don't ever want to lose you._

Daniel's words play on an endless loop, echoing through the hallowed hollowed halls of Mind and Memory, melded together with memory of sensation and memory of vision and memory of _God, yes, please_. He can't stop hearing them, any more than he can wish away the phantom touch of Daniel's lips against his, Daniel's mouth on him, Daniel's hands and Daniel's body and (oh, God) Daniel's cock (so firm so thick so beautiful), any more than he can stop tasting Daniel on his lips and on his tongue, on his hands and in his heart. He's pulled out all the stops, settling himself in full _seiza_ , lighting the incense even (doesn't bother with it often but when he does it takes him right back to sitting under Keller- _roshi_ 's watchful eye, knowing his _sensei_ would spot any break in discipline), but nothing will quiet or still the voice singing in the back of his head: _mine mine mine_ , lovingly fitting together a scrapbook of broken images (Daniel's head thrown back in pleasure, Daniel's hands grasping at his biceps, Daniel's thumb playing idly with the barbells through his nipples) that he _knows_ will rise from his subconscious to greet him at the most inopportune moments.

_Focus_ , he tells himself, sharply, fiercely, with a distinct lack of the charity-towards-self he's been preaching to Daniel for a year and a half now. _Focus, dammit. Get a grip_. But the grip isn't forthcoming; he's distracted by the memory of Daniel spreading his body (so beloved, so beautiful) over his, kissing, touching, fondling --

He groans, breaking discipline (yeah, so _sue him_ ; it isn't like he's getting very far) to run his hands through his hair and pull, sharply, hoping the pain will give him enough of a focus to _snap him out of it_. It doesn't, though. It only makes his mental newsreel feed in a different canister of film, replaying the way it had felt to have Daniel's hands buried in his hair, pulling, tugging -- how much he'd wanted Daniel to pull his head down, hold him tight and fuck his mouth, let go, use him, use his hair for a handle and knot his hands through it, tangling, pulling, a ceaseless parade of whispered imprecations and oaths falling from those beautiful lips while Daniel thrust up into the cavern of his waiting mouth --

He bangs his head against the wall, once, sharply. It doesn't help.

The door to the _zendo_ opens as he's debating hitting his head against the wall again. Mitchell, of course. Mitchell can probably hear his tailspinning halfway across the house. (Bitch.) "I gotta come over there and hold that pillow against the wall?" she says, shutting the door behind her and folding her arms across her chest. "'Cause I will, you know I will. Your head might be hard, but it don't need any new dents in it."

"Truce," he says, wearily, knowing she'll read it the way he means it: a sign that their usual merrie play (his light and his salvation) would be beyond the pale right now. Say what you will about the woman (and he certainly has, usually at the top of his lungs), she knows when he needs her. Always has. (She is the rock upon which he has built this new life out of sticks and clay and bits of mud, and without her he'd probably still be sane, still be self -- he'd gotten himself there before he ever met her -- but he certainly wouldn't be _this_ self, not-quite-husband to a woman who deserves to have roses and diamonds heaped at her feet and father trying to raise humanity's Second Evolution without giving her _too_ much of a complex and corporate tycoon for whom making money is as easy as breathing; with Mitchell all things are possible, and he knows that because they've probably tried it already.) 

She drops their usual banter like a hot potato (you don't want to be the one holding it when the music stops) and pulls out the chair he keeps in the corner on the off chance she ever deigns to join them at _zazen_ of an evening. (Doesn't, usually -- her commitment to Truth and Self-Knowledge is made manifest in far different form -- but she has an open invitation.) Settles herself down on it, resting her cane on the floor next to it, and gives him the Look: part _oh, my baby, my heart's bleeding for you and if I could let this cup pass you by I would_ and part _suck it up and soldier, soldier_ , and the one's as vital to his well-being as the other. (One of these days he needs to get around to _telling_ her; the only reason he doesn't usually is because that's not how they roll and he knows she already knows.) "I'd ask if you wanna talk about it, except I already know the answer's no and you should talk about it anyway," she says. "I take it your little bombshell finally had the desired result."

He gives up on even _trying_ to keep the discipline of posture and sprawls against the wall instead, drawing his knees up to his chest and resting his chin on top of them. "And then some," he says. ( _Daniel, right here on the_ zendo _floor, hands flexing against his hips like he wasn't sure he'd be allowed to touch --_ ) "He's out cold in the bed right now. Go easy on him when he wakes up, willya? I think he's worried about what you might think."

She snorts, softly, about as delicate as a linebacker. (That's his girl.) "Did all but tell him to jump your bones already," she says. "And the only reason I didn't is because he's been trying like hell not to realize that's what he wants for the past six months and more. I'll remind him in the morning. Or if he wakes up when I head into bed. Might gotta remind him ten ways to Sunday for the next year or so, but I'll take care of it; don't you worry." She tilts her head, studies him. He's got his game face on, all hands on lockdown wearing his very best self-control, but it doesn't matter; Mitchell reads him like a book, always has. (And he gives thanks for it daily.) "Enough about him, though. Tell me about _you_."

He takes a deep breath (breathe) and lets it out on a count of five, because there are things a woman can stand to hear about the man she's in love with, and the intimate details of his erotic cavorting with the man with whom she's built a life is probably not one of them. He takes a minute, wrangles his conscience with his habit of giving Mitchell the keys to the kingdom, and he's just about decided that he's going to lie (or, all right, not lie -- not only have they sworn a pact as solemn as any blood oath to never consciously lie to each other in word or in deed, but Mitchell's eerily good at spotting whenever he's trying to pull the wool over her eyes anyway -- but provide her with an excellent round of bullshit and demurral) when she pins him with the Look's cousin ( _wish like hell I didn't have to put you through this_ married to _if you lie to me I'll reach over there and pull your lungs out through your throat and leave them to dry, and I'd really hate to have to raise Libby the rest of the way all by my lonesome_ ) and adds, "Let's just pretend we've already been through the four rounds of you trying to feed me a line of bullshit and me telling you it isn't gonna fly."

Yeah, okay, _je capitule_ , _je me rends_ , stick a fork in him, he's done. "I've been dreaming about this night for twenty-some years and none of the fantasies I built were anything like the way it went down, and I can't decide if that's good or bad," he says. "He's still terrified he's going to wake up in the morning and hit the wall of gay panic. Hell, so am I."

Mitchell sighs, soft and shifting. "C'mere," she says, patting her thigh, and he scoots across the floor on his rear end to rest his head against her fortitude. She cards her hand through his hair. (Sometimes he wonders why he bothers tying it back, given the way Mitchell -- and Daniel now too, apparently -- pulls out the elastic at the earliest opportunity; there's something about long hair on a man, he's noted over the years, that makes a woman's eyes go dreamy and her fingers itch to play with it. He's just lucky she doesn't demand to braid ribbons into it, he supposes.) 

Her touch is soft and soothing, gentle, maternal. Nothing at all like the way he's been fantasizing about having Daniel hold him, use his hair for handles as he plunders his mouth, and _that's_ why he can't bring himself to cut it, because there's nothing in this world or any other he finds more erotic than allowing himself to be used for someone else's pleasure. (The libido doesn't answer to reason -- what gets you hard isn't ruled by higher brain -- but it doesn't take a genius to figure out where _that_ particular fetish comes from, as paradoxical as it might be. Sometimes the sweetness of being able to say he offered _consent_ this time can overwrite a whole host of uglier memories.) 

"You know he won't," Mitchell says, gentle and lulling. (Lullabye and goodnight, close your eyes and rest your head, hush, my darling is sleeping; when you wake you shall have all the pretty little horses, and Daniel is sleeping, Daniel is beautiful when he is sleeping, Daniel is naked and asleep in his bed, their bed, and he can't trust himself to climb back into it.) "Worst case scenario, he'll try to talk himself into thinking he's done something wrong and he's doing something to betray me, an' you know I'll talk him right out of that as soon's I see the thought settle in. He wouldn't've started this if he couldn't finish it. You know that as well as I do; he's too good a man to do otherwise."

He rests his head against Mitchell's thigh and closes his eyes against her mercy and grace. (He does not deserve this woman. How many others would conspire with him to give him this moment, this gift, even if the desire had been over two decades in the making? She is peerless among women, a pearl of great price, and he resolves once again that he will stretch out a hand and gather up the stars to lay at her feet if she so much as whispers that she wants them.) "I forced his hand," he says, against the soft cotton of her sweatpants. "He could have been saying what he thought I wanted to hear. Out of compassion." _Out of pity._ "Daniel would chew off his own hand and hand it over if he thought someone else needed it more than he did, no matter what he wanted or whether or not he would need it later. That's not the way I wanted him."

"Mmm," Mitchell says, soft hum of agreement and negation all at once. "He wouldn't have let you force his hand if he wasn't ready to say it. You told me yourself last week you thought he was ready to have the conversation. I told _you_ this was how it was gonna end. In fact, I'm pretty sure you owe me a grand and a footrub. You might be the one who's been sitting with him and staring at your own bellybuttons, but I'm the one who's been talking to him about this. He's spent the last six months trying to figure out what he wanted to do about the confession you made him, and he's been using the tools _you_ gave him the whole way. You say he's lying to himself, you're disregarding all the effort you put into him, and insulting his strength of will as well. You told me yourself he's the most stubborn man on this world or any other once his back gets up. Don't you think that introducing the possibility that he might do this out of pity wouldn't make him twice as determined _not_ to, after you and I both told him how much that'd be the wrong thing to do?"

"I --" He stops himself before he can say something stupid. (Too late, but Mitchell won't hold it against him, at least.) Daniel's voice, Daniel's words, play out in the echoes of memory: _You were right -- Jack was right -- to never say anything to me ... I wouldn't have made the right choices. I wouldn't have thought._ Which implies that Daniel's thought about it now. Which implies that Daniel's actions, Daniel's decisions, are rational and reasonable and made with both eyes wide open, leaping into the fray with both feet (but oh, Daniel always used to charge ahead without looking back at the slightest provocation, and it had been what made him plunge headfirst into love with the man and what had given him at least half his grey hairs all at once) after having been around the block a few times with the idea for a test-drive, kicking the tires and testing out the transmission, and oh, he wants to believe, he _wants_ to, but the price of letting down his guard now, this time, about _this_ , is so earth-shattering that to be wrong would destroy him. Unmake him, rend him down, flay him and render him into bones and hair and scraps of fat and gristle, leaving him with nothing but a hollow shell. 

So close. So near to having it all, having it waiting, all the secret dreams and desires he'd been forced to keep hidden away until he'd stepped over the Great Divide and woken up one morning as a real live boy, and the bitch of it all had been that the minute he didn't have to keep Jack O'Neill's secrets (that dross hoarded as though they were gold) he'd been thrust aside before he'd had a chance to act on them. (For this and other acts of cosmic irony, O Lord, we are duly thankful.) And now Daniel's stumbled back into his life again, for which benediction he'd paid with the life of his benefactor (a man's a man for a'that; give 'em hell in the hereafter, Jacky Boy, and save me a seat by the fire), and the Promised Land is shimmering on the horizon and he's standing on the mountain and looking down upon those gold-green hills. 

If he guesses wrong this time, the price he pays won't be suffering. It'll be damnation. Daniel's the only thing he carried across the Great Divide, the only piece he let himself bring across the road to Damascus and his own personal Longest Journey, and that makes Daniel the one thread he could tug to unravel the rag-and-bone doll he's made from scraps of Truth and Self. (Daniel's always been his only weakness, even before he set foot on the road he's vowed to travel; maybe it's fitting he kept that one piece of tribute to a man he once was and still gives thanks to each day for setting him free to find his own way.)

Mitchell knows all of this. They've been over it, piece by painful piece, from the night they'd gotten the call and he'd found out he was one in the world again after having spent so long knowing he was two all the way to the night three nights ago when Mitchell had tucked herself under his chin and said now's the time. He's cried on her and raged at her and dismantled himself so thoroughly beneath that edged compassion he thought he'd never be able to piece himself back together, until he had and found he was stronger for the breaking and rebuilding. If there's a thing she doesn't know about his own Secret History with one Dr. Daniel Jackson (Ph.D. times three and a whole host of other letters that don't include PITA, but should) he'll give up a hell of a lot more than that grand he owes her. (And the footrub.) There's no point in going over it again.

So instead he just slumps between her glorious thighs, sighing into that cradle of comfort. "Have to hope that you're right," he says. "And you know how I feel about hope."

_If you have to hope, it means you're already fucked, because having to hope means you haven't planned as well as you could have._ "Oh, baby," she says, and he closes his eyes and soaks up the fertilizer of her compassion, his balm and his blessing. "You know I'm right. He was ready to come to this conclusion six months ago. Or else you wouldn't have let yourself clue him in. You thought he wouldn't react right, you'd've spent the rest of your life being his good friend and his teacher and you'd've never let him catch a _glimpse_ of all this."

"Right now, I wish I had," he says, broken and weary. And for all that continuing to lie to Daniel (by omission and not by commission, true, but lies are lies no matter how you tell them, and the pain of living that lie had been a constant burr in the life he's built on the foundation of Truth whole and entire: truth to others always, truth to self unswervingly, and telling that lie with word and deed had been eating away at his bedrock since the moment Daniel stepped back into his life, their lives, needing to be shored up and set back to true) had been misery, his statement is Truth as well. A different sort of truth, the kind you save for late at night when the lights are down and you've got a few glasses in you, the bitterness of might-have-been, the endless perusal of your own personal quantum mirrors of imagination and regret. _If only_. 

_I wish._

"No, you don't," Mitchell says, hard on the heels of his words, rapping him lightly on the back of the neck before she goes back to stroking his hair. (One thing he loves about Mitchell -- there are so many things he loves about Mitchell, but that's one of them -- is the way her hands are always so cool against this overheated skin.) "Because you'd had enough of lying to him years before you were you, and the only reason you didn't let yourself tell him the truth was because of the promises you'd sworn to uphold and the tasks you were still trying to finish."

He really hates it when she does that. (It's the star by which he steers.) There is one person in this world or any other who can look at him and see Jack O'Neill and JD Nielson in equal measure, the person he was and the person he's trying like fuck to be, the masks he's wearing that have become a self so true, so truthful, that they've given him his greatest freedom. He's seen Mitchell look at him and look straight _through_ him -- she'd done it the minute he'd shoved his way into her life, looking past the scrawny underdeveloped chassis and seeing the six decades of experience behind his eyes -- and she has never once forgotten, never once let _him_ forget she remembers, that she sees him straight down to bone. 

She's the only person who does. Daniel's caught glimpses, here and there, yes and no, and every time Daniel thinks he sees it he tries his best to close his eyes and avert his gaze. To Daniel he's _the clone_ , _the copy_ , the forgotten Xerox left to bloom and fade and be forgotten. Uncharitable -- when he'd been ripped full-born as Athena from the head of Zeus Daniel had had plenty of other things with which to distract him; they've been through so many different mindfucks along the years that it's not unheard of Daniel might have forgotten one or two, especially considering he'd been busy trying to put himself back together with spit and duct tape and baling wire at the time -- but true; he can't help thinking it. To be SG-1 had always been we merry few, we band of brothers, back to back against the worst ravages the universe could dream up and throw in their teeth, and they'd responded by closing ranks and circling the wagons tight and swearing to each other their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honors. 

And the worst of the job had always done its very best to break them down and had never succeeded, because of that bond, because of that promise: the minute something happened it had always been _how do we undo it_ and if that hadn't been possible it had been _how do we get you through it_ , and he can't -- quite -- resent that fact, not when it had kept him (not him) on his feet and on the line for so fucking long, but when he'd found himself on the outside of that circle and the other side of that line it had fucking _galled_. The minute they'd come to him, hemming and hawing and dragging their feet until he'd dragged it out of them, he'd stopped being _one of us_ and started being a problem to be solved; it had stopped being _how do we get you through it_ and started being _how do we get him back_ , and the old familiar resentment rises up to choke him again and he swats uselessly at it. 

That was a long time ago. A lifetime ago. Another self, before he'd rechristened himself, before he'd vowed that he wouldn't let it be a tragedy, before he'd inked his life as O'Neill under his skin so he could set it aside and be washed clean in the waters of self-anointment. Daniel won't let himself look at the bits and scraps he carried with him, the pieces of history he wouldn't -- couldn't -- set aside. Mitchell's the only person he's ever known who can look at him and see them. See _him_ , whole and entire, and it's how he's managed to keep himself _sane_ for this long (no matter how thorough the role, no matter how complete the masquerade, it is always necessary to have one person for whom you don't need to pretend, in anything) and he _really hates it_ when she reminds him.

"Yeah," he says -- acknowledgement, acceptance, agreement -- and part of him wants to run screaming from this conversation (flee gibbering into the night) and part of him knows that she'd only follow after him to drag him back and then she'd be cranky for having had to go find him. So he surrenders (again; at this rate he should just buy stock in white flags) and keeps going. "He keeps spotting bits of it and sticking his head back into the sand. Every time he sees -- who I was --" No, dammit. He isn't Jack O'Neill anymore, has done a hell of a lot of work to make himself _not_ be, but if nothing else he's cursed (blessed) with a continuity of memory that stretches back to the Nifty Fifties and dammit, it's a _part_ of him, no matter how much he's struggled to confront every last scrap of it and wrestle it into place in this new framework he's built for himself over the years. He won't renounce Jack O'Neill, not when he's the only one left who holds those memories; to do so would be murder and suicide all at once. "Who I _am_. Every time he gets a glimpse of it, he runs screaming." That's a hint, and not a very pleasant one. "I feel like I'm going to be play-acting for him for the rest of our natural lives."

"Baby," Mitchell whispers. Her fingers trace the ink forming the finial at his nape, the piece he chose to cap his story, the glyph that says nothing more than _you_. (He knows who it is. She does, too.) "No, you won't. Give him time. This is crazy even for the life y'all used to lead, and he's been battered and broken a hell of a lot of times in between then and now. You don't need to pretend with him. You just have to be you. He'll see it soon enough."

Part of him hoping she's right. Part of him terrified that she is. Part of him wishing the whole problem would just _go away_ , tiptoeing quietly into the night (hell, he'll accept "runs screaming", if that's the only way he can make it disappear). Part of him just wants a nap. (And a teddy bear and a blanket and maybe a couple of frogs.) He turns his face, rubs his cheek against her thigh, sighing out his conflicted tangle of emotions (if you breathe into it it won't hurt as much) and letting them all go. "How'd we get into this mess?" he asks the pale-pink cotton weave of her sweatpants. Rhetorical question and _I don't want to talk about it anymore_ all wrapped into one, and she'll hear them both and it's up to her to decide if she'll pay attention. (She's perfectly capable of denying any request for forebearance he might happen to advance; it's a fact he's come to rely on over the years, for moments like these when his capacity for self-inspection seems to have tiptoed quietly away.) 

But this time she only laughs, soft and gentle, and he can hear in it the sound of her telling him it's all going to be all right. "Step by step," she says, "one foot after the other, by doing the thing that was most right and true at every given moment and seeing what came out in the wash." She strokes her hand over his hair again, and the reassurance she offers (just by being who she is) will never cease to amaze him. "Which is all you can do. You gave him all the pieces, baby. Up to him to see what he's going to make of it. I'd tell you to drop this all in his lap and see what he says, 'cept I know you wouldn't dream of it in a million years. Even though you should, and you know you should." 

She grabs him by the nape, then, shakes him once (briefly) before letting him go, punctuation to her words. (And dammit, she's _right_ , for all he'd rather chew his arm off than have that conversation with Daniel in this world or any other.) "You won't do that, you'll just have to trust him to be doing the right thing. You've given him the chance. He's told you -- out loud or just by what he's done -- that he's gonna take it. Time for you to let go and trust that you've done good enough work. You told him what you been afraid of for so long -- what was keeping you from saying anything about any of this -- and he came to you anyway. Even _if_ you were the one to start the conversation. That's enough of an answer for you. Or it should be. Because he's a lot of things, starting with stubborn and ending with completely clueless about the inside of his own head half the time, but the one thing he _isn't_ is cruel, at least when he hasn't been backed into a corner by circumstances outside his control. Which this isn't. If he came to you to touch you, to let you touch him, after you told him what you were frightened of in having told him the truth, it's because he doesn't think it applies."

Her voice, the same way it always gets when she's reading him the _riot act_ , has narrowed down into precise, exacting, scrupulous, even as she fillets his deepest fears and skewers them for breakfast. (Let's all go out for tea and crumpets; Mitchell's already let down his hair.) He opens his mouth to say something, something true or something cutting or something that can give voice to the _oh God please stop_ filling his throat, but she's not done yet and she's never let him back down from hearing something she's decided it's her obligation to say. "And he might be wrong. Could very well be wrong, even after all the time you and I have both spent equipping him with the tools necessary to look inside his head and not run screaming. But he _believes_. And you're too scared to believe, too, because you've been hoping for so long that to honestly let yourself believe that you might actually get something you want after so long of having the universe chew on you and spit you out leaves you terrified. But if you hold yourself aloof from this and try to ease back so it doesn't hurt as much if he decides he can't do this after all, you're going to drive him away as clear as though you put your hands on his back and shoved. And you damn well know it. You can be a hell of a lot of things and I'll stand right by you and I won't say a word, but the one thing I won't let you be is a coward."

Too many things she's stirred up to chase them all down. (Out loud, at least. She's given him enough to keep him on his knees and staring at the inside of his head all fucking night -- wouldn't be the first time, won't be the last -- and he realizes that this delightful little conversation has if nothing more served him with enough received revelation to make sure that he _can_ knock himself out of the replay of memory and reach the contemplation of self he's come to rely so much upon, for which he supposes he ought to be grateful but can't quite bring himself all the way there.) He lets the silence build between them, making sure she's really done this time. (She is nothing if not capable of launching a sneak attack just when he thinks it's safe to go back in the water.)

"I hate you," he finally says, wearily, when he's sure she isn't going to say anything else. (She'll hear what he really means: capitulation, whole and entire. She always does.)

She only laughs. "Know you do, baby," she says. "My darling baby. My magnificent boy. You'd've hit that conclusion eventually. I just saved you the time and trouble in looking for it."

He slumps against her thighs, spent and empty. "You're wrong, you know," he says, after a minute, when the silence between them grows again. She plunges her hand into his hair, her nails scratching lightly at his scalp, and makes a tiny interrogatory noise. "About me not getting anything I wanted because the universe was too busy chewing on me and spitting me out. Got you. Don't deserve you, but I got you anyway."

He's surprised her again. (He probably shouldn't be quite so smug when he manages it.) Above him, she sucks in a breath, lets it out with only a single telltale hint of voice behind it; her hand doesn't stop it soothing motion, but he's pretty sure it's the kind of statement she'll hold close to her chest and haul out to examine in her own dark moments. And yeah. He needs to say it more often, for all that they so rarely give voice to the terrifying and awe-inspiring bond they have between them, because he's spent the last year and more telling her over and over again how much he wants Daniel and he keeps forgetting to tell her how much he needs _her_ , counting on their unspoken link to tell her for him. And for someone who always hated himself every time he failed at keeping the pledges of monogamy he'd given, over and over, he can't deny he loves them both (two loves alike, not in kind or in degree, but in some ineffable measure he can't name or place). Maybe that self-loathing was something he left behind on a road to Pueblo so many years ago. It certainly doesn't fit in this new life he's built for himself.

When she speaks, though, her voice is just as neat and even as it has been. "Maybe we deserve each other," she says. "And you can take that any way you're of a mind to." She bounces her knee, once, jiggling her leg to urge him: _up, enough, you've had your chance to wallow_. "Come on. You're going to be up all night, we both know it damn well, so you can make me a cup of chamomile tea and you a cup of coffee before I go climb in with Daniel and tell him everything's going to be all right. And then you can come back in here and settle down to work through everything I just hit you with until you can look him in the eye and face whatever he brings you without cracking. Because I know you can. You can make it through anything."

He lets himself have a few more seconds with his head resting in her lap before he drags himself upright. "Usually because I have a particularly annoying gadfly nipping at my heels," he says -- _thank you; I love you; I don't know what the hell I'd do without you_ \-- and reaches down his hands to help her up. "And I reserve the right to add ice cream to the equation."

She snorts, accepting his assistance with the same matter-of-factness she always carries when he offers it. (He's the only person she lets herself lean on, and if he's ever wondered what it is that _he_ gives _her_ , other than the same sort of clarion wake-up call whenever she needs it, all he needs to do is look to those moments when she reaches up her hands to let him set her on her feet, trusting his intimate knowledge of her body and its faults and flaws.) "You always do," she says. "I ate like you, I'd be five hundred pounds." (And that's another thing she gives him, the easy acceptance of all the ways in which his re-edited and re-made body is _different_ , all the tiny hints and telltales by which he constantly betrays that he, that their daughter, is something new and strange. To her, they are simply _them_.) 

The easy banter they slip back into as readily as breathing is comforting, comfortable, soothing and calming and the code and stand-in for all the things they both find it too deep and vast to say. Still, he's not quite ready to let the cup of truth pass them by, at least not without saying one last thing. He stoops to pick up her cane for her, puts his hand over hers when she takes it. "Mitchell," he says (not quite sure why; he already has her attention). "He loves you too, you know. Don't you go pushing him out of the way, either."

She smiles at him, and her smile is more beautiful than the angels. "I'm smarter than you are," she says. "Come on. You promised me ice cream."

It makes him laugh. (What passes for laughter, these days, in a life where he keeps such iron control over the outward display of his emotions because for so long he wore them on his face and on his sleeve for anyone to read and use against him, but of course Mitchell can read each tiny huff and breath as though they were a symphony.) "I promised _me_ ice cream," he says. " _You_ said something about five hundred pounds."

She swings her cane at him, one quick swipe that just barely misses his calves. "Get," she orders. 

He gets. He doesn't turn his head to look down the hallway at the closed bedroom door where Daniel is sleeping, either. Mitchell is right (Mitchell is often right); morning will come soon enough.


End file.
